Archive for the ‘Skepdad thoughts’ Category
Sunday Reading: Freakonomics
Sundays? What Have I Been Reading About Parenting?
Don’t know how many of you skeptical parents out there have picked up a copy of the pop-sociology book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Levitt and Dubner. It came out a few years ago. I ignored it previously, but stumbling across it again I spent the weekend picking through my own gratis version, and (as I kick off a slightly skewed variation on this experimental little blog) I thought I’d note to my tiny audience that therein contains an interesting (perhaps awkward) chapter or two between its covers leaning into the territory of skeptical parenting. I couldn’t help but cringe at some of the assertions being made based on (what seemed to my little eyes) highly subjective correlations in the authors’ data. And that said, it is a pop-reference book meant to appeal to a weekender audience. But the authors seem to spend a lot of text convincing us to be skeptical of broad assertions and suspect of researched analysis, then dropping bombshells of their own and expecting the reader to nod enthusiastically.
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skepdad’s “free time” the second
After a rather sleepless night I required this, a gelatinous goo of a blog entry, to get my brain functioning again. I was pulled from sleep numerous times by a crying kid. USUALLY she sleeps through the night. USUALLY the wife insists that she be the one to manage the occasional wake-ups. USUALLY she insists that it’s my job to get a good nights sleep so I am awake to go to work and earn money for paying bills and such. But the girl screamed for FOUR hours last night and so eventually I crawled out of bed and went to sit on the floor beside my frustrated wife and a screaming daughter for no other purpose than moral support. Why was she screaming? I suppose the answer will remain locked in her little noggin never to be known. But that doesn’t stop the sporadic external analysis from being shared everywhere we tell such tales.
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Designing a Creative Family Space
It looks like we’re going to be doing some home renovations in the coming months, and given the opportunity we’re planning to incorporate an “arts and crafts” room into the blueprints. Initially I was keen to build myself something more traditional: an office, a den, or a workroom. But I’ve sold myself (and my wife) on the idea of building something a little more family oriented. Since the planning stage has just begun, now is the time to decide on the gritty details of this soon-to-be creative space in our basement. Some of the initial (feasible) construction ideas are as follows… and I welcome insight and comments.
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Rituals, of a Kind.
We’ve tripped on the wires of reactionary parenting once or twice, but it is difficult to avoid those traps so delicately shaped in the vacancies left by our common sense. There is a gush of information that is unavoidable as a diligent parent. There is a sense of being overwhelmed by opinion and editorializing, the advice of helpful relations, and an incessant cluck of reasons filtering across the information fibers so thoroughly penetrating our home. It is enough to push a dad to a kind of parental anarchy, to rebel against the norms of expectations and creed, and deliberately fight the grain of mixed counsel so freely offered by countless voices.
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skep/dad’s “free time” the first
I have gaps in my attendance here. And the fact that this is a parenting blog, such a statement should be fairly self explanatory. I’m a busy guy. I’m in demand (or so I’m told.) And I’ve got a little girl who yearns for my undivided attention. So here are some “free time” moments that I don’t have the “free time” (except on a lunch break) to flesh out much further at the moment.
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Avoiding the Rip Cord
As I write this I’m sitting on the floor of the living room in my pajamas struggling to find that internal parental peace that will prevent me from jumping in and rescuing my daughter from her struggles. She’s a few muscle-fibers short of being able to prop herself into a crawling position and in an effort to do so she is performing failed, faux push-ups and bemoaning the fact with an ongoing vocal tirade that is enough to drive me some sort of intervention. But in the name of all things ‘independence’ I resist, and so I’m distracting myself with a blog post.
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I just wanna be…
… the dad who can lay back on the summer grass with his starry-eyed kid and not just answer her questions about the planets, galaxies, and random mysteries of quantum physics, but who can also inspire an persistent and probing curiosity about the universe in a young mind.
… the dad who knows why bugs have six legs and spiders have eight, and encourages his kids to come home with a jar full of crawlies so he can explain the local ecosystem and why we need to set the bugs free when we’re done.
… the dad who can build a mean snow fort.
… the dad who doesn’t buy his kids ’stuff’ to make-up, replace, or apologize for anything, but rather comes home with a sheath of paper and a rainbow of coloured pencils to spend a Saturday afternoon side-by-side laying on the living room floor tracing random shapes and abstract arts onto a hundred sheets of paper.
… the dad who avoids the easy-route of plugging in a head-rest DVD, and instead sings ridiculous songs in the car, negotiates the countryside with observational narratives, and carves away hours with dozens of meandering games that point out the colour of the passing vehicles or silly words extracted from the letters of license plates.
… the dad who knows the lyrics to all the crazy kid’s songs.
… the dad who can invent elaborate and entertaining fictions from the lives of his kids, mixing, blending, and extrapolating elements of their personalities and realities into playful narratives to be enjoyed under the safety of their blankets and explored as they drift off to sleep.
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The skep/dad blog is a place for rational, science-minded fathers to express their thoughts, opinions, and ideas about bringing up kids to be critical thinking adults in a world filled with superstition, mysticism, and pseudoscience.
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Brad adds: As of October 2007, I'm soliciting interest for skeptics in the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada area who are interested in forming a skeptical society to contact me. Please do so through this blog or via Facebook (through the Edmonton Skeptical Society Group).
Or visit our new website: www.edmontonskeptics.org - It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the same scene endowed as we are with the curiosity, filled to overbrimming as we are with questions, and naturally talented as we are for the asking of clear questions, and then for us to do nothing about, or worse, to try to suppress the questions...- Lewis Thomas
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- Science Creative Quarterly
- NeuroLogica Blog
- Bad Language
- Junior Skeptic
- Skeptical Surfer
- Skeptical Family Forum
- The Blogfathers
- The Philosopher Dad
- The Meming of Life
- Snopes (Urban Legends Reference)
- ScienceBlogs
- Podblack Blog
- Claire’s Booklist
- Skeptical Mom
- SkepBitch
- DIYFather.com
- Science Based Medicine
- Skeptic Magazine
- The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
- Skeptical Kids
- The Museum of Hoaxes
- Nye Labs
- Skeptic’s Annotated Bible
- Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena
- James Randi Educational Foundation
- Bug Girl’s Blog
- Memoirs of a Skepchick
- The Skeptic Dad
- Pediatrics
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